Former CBD Metro chief to drive north-west rail link

By Jacob Saulwick

7 April 2011 — 12:00am

THE O'Farrell government has appointed the man in charge of the CBD Metro, a project it described as reckless and mismanaged in opposition, to run its centrepiece transport policy, the north-west rail link.

Yesterday the Premier, Barry O'Farrell, and the Transport Minister, Gladys Berejiklian, announced a project team to deliver the north-west rail link and committed to beginning geotechnical work on the line this year.

Ms Berejiklian said Rodd Staples, the former chief executive of the Sydney Metro Authority, would lead the project, and said he should not be judged by his previous role.

''We will not blame very, very talented people for the mistakes of the previous Labor government,'' Ms Berejiklian said.

''The Labor government had 10 different transport plans, 12 different rail lines … it was not treating anyone with any respect when it comes to public transport,'' she said.

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''We have full confidence in the team we are putting together.''

The new government is unable to say when it would finish the north-west line, a critical 23-kilometre rail link extending from Epping to Rouse Hill, first promised by Labor in 1998.

But Ms Berejiklian said she would know the cost of the line and the route by the end of the year, and that construction would start in the government's first term.

Despite the CBD Metro debacle, which has cost NSW taxpayers more than $400 million since it was cancelled by the Keneally government, Mr Staples won a reputation with private sector infrastructure groups.

Heading the north-west project, one of Mr Staples's tasks will be to find a way of fitting extra trains running on the new line onto an already crowded CityRail system.

Since the demise of the CBD Metro, Mr Staples is known to have been examining ways of converting part of the CityRail grid to a single-deck, high-frequency metro-style system.

Ms Berejiklian, however, confirmed that standard double-decked trains would run on the new rail line. ''This is a heavy rail link,'' she said.

Ms Berejiklian has appointed Owen Johnstone-Donnet, an experienced Liberal adviser and former executive with the infrastructure lobby Tourism and Transport Taskforce, as chief of staff. Larry McGrath, from the TTF's sister organisation, Infrastructure Partnerships Australia, is her policy director.

The executive director of Infrastructure Partnerships Australia, Brendan Lyon, said Mr Staples's appointment was particularly welcome. Mr Lyon said the government should consider a public-private partnership to deliver the north-west line.